One of the biggest misconceptions of what radio imaging is, is that it’s ‘marketing’ when in fact it isn’t at all, it’s ‘advertising’.

The difference between marketing and advertising is that marketing talks about the company (in this case the radio station) where advertising talks about the consumer (in this case the listener) selling the positive attributes of the product, your radio station!

Radio listeners are a hardened bunch, which comes from years and years of being bombarded with messages not just through the radio, but through the TV, on billboards, even in public bathrooms. Everywhere they go someone is trying to sell them something! Radio listeners have become quite adept at using their bullshit alarms. When they hear BS it shuts out the message. Radio imaging that takes the ‘marketing’ route is automatically ‘STOPPED’ from entering the brain and your message that you are “The Rock Station the REALLY Rocks!” is lost in the ether.

There are two kinds of advertising:

• ”call to action’ advertising and
• ”brand’ advertising.

In the case of radio imaging ‘call to action’ ads are your typical:  “Listen at 5 for the Drive at Five” or “coming up in the next 30 minutes your chance to win…” a message that asks the listener to do something (listen) at a particular time of the day or to do something specifically as it relates to the radio station.

Effective radio imaging is ‘brand’ advertising

In order to do effective brand advertising you need to first understand how you are perceived by your listeners. I’ve said it many times before “branding starts in the listeners mind”. Once you understand that you can build on it and then help the listener to expand what he believes to be true about your station with each progressive imaging liner…with each progressive imaging campaign.
If you want to win the hearts of your listeners you need to get into their minds. And the key to getting into their mind is not through marketing…it’s through brand advertising.

Consumers don’t buy products anymore they buy brands. What are you doing to build your radio station’s brand?